Gaming Trends for 2018

February 15, 2018

Source: static.pexels.com

At the beginning of each year tech publications and gadget fundi’s make predictions regarding the expected trends for that year. It’s always interesting to look back at the end of the year to see how many of those glimpses into the future had in fact played out as predicted. If all that has been spotted in the fortune-teller’s globe rings true for 2018, then it’s going to be a very exciting year on the gaming front indeed!

AR: More Than Just Pokémon Go

Love it or hate it, Pokémon Go introduced many of us to the wonderful world of Augmented Reality for the first time. The game introduces gaming elements into the existing natural world by creating a type of overlay made up of digital elements. By making use of existing navigation technology such as Google Maps, the game pinpoints the user’s GPS location, enabling the various applications to then prompt the relevant digital elements to appear so that the user may interact with those elements.

AR is basically VR on steroids and it’s expected to shape the gaming landscape even more in 2018. It’s all about turning imagination into reality. Many new AR game titles are being developed and released already and its going to be interesting to see how the year progresses.

It’s All About eSports

The fact that Twitch.tv, a leading eSports streaming site, attracts the kind of user who views 44% more minutes per month than YouTube, should make anyone still in doubt as to whether eSports is just a passing craze, swallow their words. Really, despite the recent boom, eSports has been many years in the making. The time for anyone wanting to take advantage of the boom is now. Now is the opportunity to get on board from the get-go, instead of trying to play catch-up later.

eSports is expected to get bigger and bigger from this point onwards, with the expected annual revenue created by the product as a whole, estimated at a cool $1.5 billion by the year 2020.

Several traditional sporting franchises have recently formed partnerships with eSports gaming publishers and 2018 will in all probability see the launch of a whole new wave of games and tournaments.

When talking games, there are a number of movers and shakers expected to spice things up in 2018. Quake Champions is one of those games. Who can forget the days when arena-based shoot ‘em up games were all the rage? It’s a matter of the ‘90’s being back, just better than before.

Another game set to make it big this year is Amazon’s first attempt at competitive multi-player video games: Breakaway. All the usual suspects known to catapult a game all the way to glorious fandom have been applied: the frantic combat, the colourful mythological heroes, the gloriously competitive brawls; it’s all there.

Going Mobile

Mobile games really just are all that, with the very description saying it all: its mobile and its convenient. Apart from a number of entertaining titles expected to see the light during 2018, there is also a dynamic revolution happening in the mobile casino world. Games are interactive and bonuses are getting bigger and better, attracting more players from all over the globe. Exciting times are ahead for mobile games in the New Year indeed.

The Rise Of Indie

Many expect 2018 to be the year of the Indie game (independent video game). Indie games are generally created and developed without the financial support of a mainstream publisher. As such, regulations are fewer and developers are completely in control of the content, a system well known to be highly conducive to getting the creative juices flowing in a big way.

With these and so many other exiting trends on the horizon, 2018 looks set to be an awesome one in every way.